Residents Have Surplus Of Snake Food

TORRINGTON — Rats and mice are piling up in Patricia and Roland August Jr.'s apartment.

The rodents aren't running free, there are just too many.

The Augusts use mice and rats to feed their ball pythons, Thunder and Lightning. But the pythons have been kind of snakey lately, not eating as much as usual. Meanwhile, the all-white rodent population has been multiplying.

The couple placed a classified advertisement in a newspaper Friday, seeking buyers for the surplus. Patricia August said they hope to sell all the rodents except for one male and one female rat -- just enough to keep them in snake chow.

On Friday afternoon, several glass terrariums in a bedroom housed 10 adult rats, 10 baby rats, six adult mice and 13 babies. One female mouse had a birdcage nursery atop a dresser, her four jellybean-sized youngsters nestled under fluffy wood shavings. Across the room, the large rats were snoozing contentedly -- too much for Thunder and Lightning to handle.

``We usually feed the babies to them,'' Patricia August said. ``The snakes can't eat the big rats, but they can eat the baby-size rats.''

Besides snakes and rodents, the Augusts have two lizards -- a spotted midnight and a Cuban anole -- and a ferret in their tidy second- floor apartment on Clarence Street. The snakes are her husband's pets, Patricia August quickly explained.

``I like iguanas and lizards, but he's into snakes and lizards,'' she said.